I love that when Michael moved into the castle he took it upon himself to be “useful” in fear that Howl would kick him out otherwise. And of course when he told Sophie that she took it to heart. So Sophie and probably Michael were living in fear that they could get the boot at any minute if they didn’t give howl reason to keep them.
And meanwhile Howl, who never asked for any of this, took in a poor orphan and cursed young-old lady and ended up with a panic apprentice and a cleaning disaster.
if ur gonna understand anything about being aro, understand that we have Nothing. by which I don’t mean our lives are unfulfilling or ‘lacking’ a certain attraction sucks I just mean like. even compared to other queer groups we have No representation (not even within fandom), No recognition, No real history, No out as aro celebrities, No accepted language to talk about ur experiences, No set path even and it is just. incredibly hard to find ur place bc u can’t see urself anywhere or talk about who you are. And I don’t know how well I explained that but look that’s why we need ur allyship its so there’s any chance we can just have some kind of place to know what being aro even is within some kind of context. I want to stop feeling like i’m floating
I am reading scholarly works about Jane Austen and having hearteyes about obscure details in the Pemberley chapters of P&P that indicate Mr. Darcy’s sustainable land management praxis.
Okay, let’s talk about Pemberley!
Austen, as a rule, doesn’t spend many paragraphs describing locations. There’s often information to be gleaned from their names (Sense and Sensibility is full of lurking references to sexual scandals and Mansfield Park to slavery), but Longbourn just means “long stream” or “long boundary,” Netherfield means “lower field,” and Rosings’ original owner was a redhead. Meryton, a pun on “merry town,” is kind of fascinating, given the installment of the militia and the threat to stability and serenity they represent. Partying and shenanigans. Possibly a Shakespeare ref.
Longbourn barely gets any description at all. From the get-go, everyone who lives there is obsessed with other places, with getting out (except Mr. Bennet, who never wants to leave his library, never mind the house). Lady Catherine deems it small and mildly uncomfortable, which is in keeping with the theme of confinement, but also it’s Lady Catherine talking. Netherfield can’t tell us much about Bingley, who is only a tenant. Rosings is expensively, ostentatiously modern and gaudily furnished, though it has a handsome park that Lady Catherine and her stifled daughter never set foot in but Elizabeth and Darcy both frequently escape to during their stays.
So it’s notable and wonderful that Austen goes out of her way to describe Pemberley as an old-fashioned, highly successful, working estate. Its practical old Anglo-Saxon name means “Pember’s clearing.” A pember is a man who grows barley. Darcy most likely still does. As Elizabeth and the Gardiners approach and tour the house, they notice and admire its beautiful surrounding woods, and then when they wander outside, the specific word Austen uses is coppice woods. A coppice is a woodland filled with tree species that grow new shoots from their stumps when you chop them down. Darcy probably has oaks on a fifty-year cycle as well as faster-growing species such as hawthorn and hornbeam for firewood, timber and cattle fodder. Coppice forestry is functional and sustainable, and provides habitat for beasts and birds.
Darcy is the anti-John Dashwood (Dashwood, srsly), the brother in Sense and Sensibility who inherits Elinor and Marianne’s childhood estate of Norland, whose wife immediately starts making plans to hack down trees (not even coppice trees, but big, gorgeous, venerable hardwoods) to make way for a folly. Jane Austen hated follies. Also, it ought to be noted that timber was so valuable in Britain at the time that estates often had inheritance clauses that detailed who was and wasn’t allowed to chop down what.
Darcy’s a food producer and land conservator, prefers nature over fussy, ornamental landscape design, his servants and tenants like him, he gives money to the poor… and… he’s a trout fisherman! He shoots, too, as do Bingley and Hurst and Mr. Bennet, but it’s a particular mark in his favour that Austen singles him and Mr. Gardiner out as anglers. It’s a pastime that signifies a taste for contemplation and quietness and appreciation of nature, as blissfully described in The Compleat Angler; or, The Contemplative Man’s Recreation, a hugely popular travel book first published in the 1600s and reprinted often for 18th C libraries. The plot of The Compleat Angler is about the conversion of a hunter (pastime of the ultra-rich) to a fisherman who learns to love the peaceful sport. We receive ample evidence elsewhere that Darcy is a man capable of swift, decisive action and formidable effectiveness. But at Pemberley, Austen takes care to show us how he’s balanced.
Most of the information in this post comes from Margaret Doody’s Jane Austen’s Names.
I didn’t know any of this! I always thought it was a bit odd how her viewing the estate changed her views of the man himself, as if it was about how big the place was. Instead it was how he cared for the land / people. Fascinating! Completely missed that.
It’s literally his character reference! Most women at the time had to marry for financial security, yet marriage was horribly risky, because divorce was almost impossible. If you married someone you didn’t know well, and he turned out to be lazy, irresponsible, or abusive, you were stuck.
This is why so many Austen heroes are mature, almost frumpy men the heroines have known for years. Local fellows with family ties. They don’t offer breathless romances; the happy endings they offer are happy because they are safe.
Darcy is not a local boy.
Darcy is not a fully formed, baggable Austen hero when he proposes at Hunsford, not just because he’s rude af, but because Lizzy doesn’t know him well enough yet. She has no real way of knowing how he would treat her. Austen sends Lizzy to Pemberley not to dazzle her with Darcy’s wealth, but to provide her with good, hard evidence of his treatment of the people under his protection, including his tenants, his sister, and the intelligent, dignified housekeeper who has known him since he was a toddler.
Character references established, we may proceed with the romance.
(n.b. He doesn’t know her either, until she’s rejected him. He proposes, despite his giant pile of reservations, because he’s so horny for her he can’t stand it (at least, to his credit, he’s turned on by her brains as much as her hot little bod), but only after her refusal does he realize how completely he has failed to understand this woman or make himself worthy of her. He falls in love for real only after she has demanded that he live up to his own high standards. Refreshing, ain’t it?)
Dear Men Writers
Lesser known facts when writing women:
- High heeled shoes don’t become flats if you break the heels off.
- The posts of earrings aren’t sharp.
- Nail polish takes a long time to dry and smudges when wet.
- You can’t hold in a period like pee.
- Inserting a tampon is not arousing or sexual in any way, ever.
Feel free to add your own.
– Bras leave red marks on the skin under and around boobs and it is a magical experience when taken off.
– Make up can take anywhere from 5 to 25 minutes depending on how skilled you are.
– Taking hair out of a ponytail after wearing it for hours does not make it perfectly straight when it comes down.
– Hair when wet sticks to the skin it no longer flows, idiot.
-When women with long hair kiss, turn around, do anything, their hair falls in the way.
– Stockings are itchy and tear like wet paper bags.
– Pantyhose, tights, leggings, and stockings are each different.
– Waxing hurts and leaves red skin for a while afterwards while shaving leaves stubble
– Most can’t run in heels unless they have been VERY worn
– Insecurity in appearance doesn’t mean “buy me a drink”
– EVERYONE HAS DIFFERENT TASTES IN EVERYTHING
-Having large breasts sucks. It sucks beyond belief. If a garment happens to fit your large chest, odds are it won’t fit the rest of you. Underboob sweat is real and terrible. Bending over for extended periods of time will tweak your back out. Running can be painful due to boob turbulence. Bras are hella expensive. Big breasts are not fun.
Putting a tampon in isnt a quick bend-poke-done kinda deal. It involves cubicle yoga, messy hands, numerous curse words as you realise it isnt in correctly and have to take it out and start again with a new one.
Yes to all of this. But also:
If her hair is in an updo, one does not simply remove a hairpin to send her hair cascading down her back. No. If her hair is an updo, it will take at least an hour and an extra set of hands to remove the 137 bobby pins that are holding her hair in place. Furthermore, there’s probably a can’s worth of hairspray in there, intended to withstand category 2 hurricane winds. There’s no cascading happening here – the best you can hope for is a misshapen nest of hair to clump and poof unattractively in the back while it still remains flat against her scalp.
This is one of the funniest posts I’ve seen in a while (especially if you read all the comments), but also really depressing because at 42 I still judge myself as having failed for not matching up to all these mythical stereotypes despite knowing they’re impossible
^^^This though
The odds of a woman having smoothly shaved legs and armpits are directly proportional to the amount of skin her clothing bares and/or the amount of fucks she gives at that particular moment.
GLASSES ARE NOT COSMETIC. If we whip them off, we do not become gorgeous fashion models. We become squinty.
-most women wear bras. Yes, even when they are trying to dress sexy. Because bras make boobs look perkier and rounder, which is something men apparently find sexy, so being a seductress or femme fatale is not an automatic reason for a female character to not be wearing a bra.
-a good bra will hide headlights, or at the very least drastically reduce their noticeability. A women with enough pointy nipple issues will opt for a padded or molded bra to hide them.
-women’s nipples do not automatically become hard pyramids visible through any and all layers of clothing the second they become even slightly aroused. They are not the female equivalent of boners. And even if their nipples do get hard, the bras they are almost certainly wearing (because even a goddamn succubus with big, honkin’ knockers for seducing men is gonna have those painful puppies in some kind of boob sling) should keep those pointy nipples from being visible to every other character in the scene, JIM BUTCHER. YES, EVEN LARA RAITH WOULD WEAR A BRA ONCE IN A GODDAMN WHILE.
- if you’re being tied up and tortured in a freezing underground dungeon, then you probably have more important things to pay attention to than how hard somebody’s nipples are, jim butcher
– Wearing a bra that doesn’t fit HURTS. It’s not sexy to wear a bra that’s “two sizes too small”, it’d make your clothes hang oddly and you’d have a weird, uncomfortable “quad-boob” effect and your back would hurt, BEN AARONOVITCH.
Also, after removing a too small bra, there’s gonne be angry red lines on the boobs and ribs and the lady is not going to want them to be touched by anyone for a good long while
-Not all women wear heels. Those things hurt and are hard to balance in. They can also mess up your feet and back pretty bad.
-Lips aren’t just naturally red “as if she’d been drinking wine but they were just like that without makeup cause she’s so perfect,” my dear little Kvothe from ‘Name of the Wind’. Also, girls do not naturally smell like fruit or flowers, it’s either perfume or something she’d been eating recently.
I’ve been appreciating this post but now it’s back very specifically calling out my problematic faves and I don’t think those male authors realize how much it totally takes me out of the story for a moment when they commit these errors. It does nothing useful for the plot and is annoying for half of the audience
Is it weird that I’m female and wasn’t aware of a solid third of these?
I mean, all writes take note. I basically live in man land when it comes to protagonists so I don’t know half these things despite being a woman
(Most) Women do not look at themselves in the mirror and compare their breasts to fruit. Any sort of fruit. Especially melons. Please save us from the melons.
Also we are not aware of our breasts at all times. I do not walk down a flight of stairs and think “oh golly my breasts are bouncing so much right now”. They are as much as natural part of our bodies as arms. Do you constantly think about how your arms are moving? Sure you may be aware of them, but paying full attention? Doubtful.
Also: women working out are almost never sexy. They’re not glowing or glistening or (kill me) *sparkling*. They are red and sweaty and gross just like all the dudebros doing their time with the dumbbells. Stop ogling fictional women at the gym, TOM WOLFE.
I love this post.
a guide to uk cities for foreign people
manchester: gays. you will probably get mugged, way better than london though, also known as madchester, because best nightlife and britpop
liverpool: like manchester, but less gay. you will definitely get mugged. notorious for stealing wheels
newcastle: probably quite good for canadians as exists in permafrost and has never left the 90s.
leeds: it’s a lot cheaper than london
bradford: leeds but awful
nottingham: gun death capital of the uk!
derby: intense rivalry with nottingham, literally no one else in the country or world gives any fucks about this.
hull: violently resist anyone who attempts to take you here
leicester: i’m not sure this is a real place
york: this is an illustration from the top of a christmas biscuit assortment
birmingham: NO.
brighton & hove: more gays. is only a pretend city. mild to moderate chance of mugging. contains some deeply annoying hippies. basically if san francisco was british.
portsmouth: there is literally nothing here.
southampton: exactly the same as portsmouth but smells of off milk
bristol: you have a 1 in 10 chance of ending up in a bbc recording. everyone sounds like a farmer or bob marley.
cardiff: you have a 1 in 5 chance of ending up in a bbc recording, and a 1 in 3 chance of being glassed.
plymouth: post apocalyptic wind tunnel full of drunk sailors pissing on depressed hookers. do not enter.
penzance: everyone here is from london now.
london: no one from london is actually from london and even breathing is expensive.
cambridge: windy and full of equal amounts of homeless drug addicts and public schoolboys. the junkies are nicer.
oxford: same number of cunts as cambridge but easier to escape from due to all-night bus to london
edinburgh: a goth turned into a city. basically london but slightly more scottish.
glasgow: it is impossible to tell whether people are angry or happy.
aberdeen: las vegas at the point when vegas starts crying uncontrollably
belfast: do not order “an irish car bomb” OR “a black and tan” here.
wolverhampton: really, really don’t.
norwich: count people’s fingers. mutations walk here.
coventry: like plymouth, bombed flat in ww2. like plymouth, failed to take the hint. like plymouth: do not alight here.
sheffield: everyone talks like sean bean or alex turner, still better than london
Site Title 